Ukraine’s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was plunged into fresh controversy on Tuesday after Russian television broadcast a tape where she is heard urging the “wiping out” of Russians over Moscow’s seizure of Crimea…
“This really crosses all the boundaries,” Tymoshenko is heard to say in the leaked phone call posted on YouTube and broadcast extensively on Russian television Monday.
“One has to take up arms and go wipe out these damn ‘katsaps’ together with their leader,” the voice said in Russian, without mentioning Putin by name.
The word “katsap” is a derogatory Ukrainian term for Russians…
“I am sorry that I am not able to be there and am not in charge of these processes, they wouldn’t have had a fucking chance of getting Crimea off me.”
“I would have found a way to finish off these bastards,” the 53-year-old leader of the 2004 pro-democracy Orange revolution was heard as saying.
“I am hoping that I will use all my connections and will get the whole world to rise up so that not even scorched earth would be left of Russia.”
Discussing the fate of Ukraine’s eight million ethnic Russians with Shufrych, Tymoshenko was also heard as saying that they should be “nuked”.

Whoever wins the vote on 25 May will face a tough task. The International Monetary Fund on Thursday offered Ukraine a bailout of up to $18bn (£10.9bn) over two years, in return for harsh economic reforms that may well worsen living standards for the already impoverished population. Further IMF aid will be unlocked if austerity measures are passed, including a sharp rise in the cost of energy…
Apart from the rise of up to 50% in the price of gas for consumers, Ukraine's state-controlled natural gas provider announced a 40% gas price increase for local heating companies, starting on 1 July. The government also accepted a flexible exchange rate for its currency, the hryvnia, which has fuelled inflation: an annual inflation rate of 12-14% is predicted.

Two events this week have exposed the propaganda used by the German government and its allies to justify their actions in Ukraine: the death of Alexander Musytchko and a telephone conversation with Yulia Timoschenko, which was intercepted and made public.

At the time of his death, Muzychko was also under investigation for involvement in Ukrainian organized crime. He also faced an international arrest warrant, for torturing Russian prisoners while fighting on the side of Islamist Chechen separatists against Russia in 1994-95.

Leopoldo Lopez, a U.S.-educated economist who leads a radical wing of the opposition, defied Capriles’ moderate approach to organize street resistance against Maduro – and has been jailed for leading the protests.
That has made him a ‘martyr’ for some in the opposition and wrong-footed Capriles, who backs the protesters’ grievances but not their tactics as he seeks to preserve his own standing as the main anti-Maduro figurehead.

If any meeting was meant to be private, it was this one: the top spy chief, the foreign minister and his deputy, and a top military official discussing secret plans for possible military action in Syria…
On Thursday morning, a recording was posted on YouTube in which the officials were heard discussing a plot to establish a justification for military strikes in Syria.

Egypt is facing international criticism after the largest mass sentencing in its modern history. On Monday, 529 supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi were ordered killed over the death of a single police officer in protests last summer. The trial lasted just over two days, with the majority tried in absentia. The exceptionally swift trial and harsh sentences mark a new escalation of the Egyptian military regime’s crackdown on Morsi supporters, which has led to hundreds of deaths and thousands of arrests. In another closely watched trial, Al Jazeera journalists Peter Greste, Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy have been denied bail after nearly three months in prison. They are accused of belonging to or aiding a terrorist organization.

Angry Buddhist protesters rampage through streets as country’s first census for 30 years opens up ethnic tensions…
There are more than a million Rohingya in Burma, and 140,000 have lived in camps in Rakhine since ethnic riots and clashes with Buddhists nearly two years ago. They will not be counted as Burmese citizens on the census, nor will they be listed among the 135 officially designated ethnic categories. But the census will acknowledge they exist by allowing an “other” category, allowing people to identify themselves as Rohingya.

Last week, 14-year-old Yusef a-Shawamreh and two of his friends left their village of Deir al-Asal al-Fauqa in the southern West Bank to pick plants on his family’s field, west of the separation fence…
After crossing the fence, the boys heard three or four gunshots. The firing came from an IDF ambush, a few dozen meters away. … [T]he shots had been fired with no warning.
A-Shawamreh was wounded in the hip and fell to the ground bleeding. He managed to crawl to the road, but then the soldiers emerged from their hiding place.
The soldiers arrested the other two boys and a-Shawamreh received preliminary medical treatment. A military ambulance arrived only half an hour later, although an IDF camp is located a mere two kilometers away. Meanwhile, the boy bled to death.

One of the more bizarre aspects of the last nine months of Snowden revelations is how top political officials in other nations have repeatedly demonstrated, or even explicitly claimed, wholesale ignorance about their nations’ cooperation with the National Security Agency, as well as their own spying activities. This has led to widespread speculation about the authenticity of these reactions: Were these top officials truly unaware, or were they pretending to be, in order to distance themselves from surveillance operations that became highly controversial once disclosed?

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Beijing International Peace Vigil was started in March 2003 by a group of foreigners living in Beijing, China who want to work together to build lasting peace, security and justice for everyone throughout the world. Our motivation to form the group was our shared opposition to the US-initiated war on Iraq.
However, our commitment goes beyond opposing war to the need for everyone to build a better world. We believe that one important way to build peace and justice is to defend and strengthen existing global institutions, especially the UN family, as well as to build new institutions, both formal and informal.
A second essential way is to work for an alternative internationalist form of globalization as opposed to today’s corporate version.
The group meets every week to discuss related issues and from time to time invites guest speakers to address the group. The group is devising its own ideas on United Nations reform, a Millennium Goal for Peace and an alternative form of globalization. It seeks to link up with others thinking along similar lines to encourage debate of these issues and help create a force for change to which governments will have to listen.
As one of our members said, there is a second superpower in the world: it is the voices and action of the peoples throughout the world working together for peace and justice.